June 20(I think), 1996 Blair Nebraska

This account is before I had my first actual chase. It is one of
many storms I recorded from town from 91-99(yet the only worthwhile
one, lol).

The first supercell went about 5 miles or so to the north. The
second, very angry looking one, went directly overhead. The third went
about 5 miles south. I only snapped one picture of the first weaker
looking supercell to nnw. As I pulled up to my friend's house(at the
begining of all this) the sirens were sounding. There were no storms in
sight at this time. Soon after the first one appeared to the northwest of
town, moving basically east.

This storm looks pretty good to me now, but at the time I didn't know
any better. I'm writting this in the spring of 2000. I'm glad I didn't
follow it, because I would have missed what was lined up right behind it.

Supercell #1 nnw of town

The second supercell was one impressive storm. This was all shot
from a friend's back yard. None of us could believe what we were seeing
and had no idea what it was going to do. What we did know was that it was
going to go straight over us.

I knew enough at the time that it was a supercell and figured it was
rotating pretty good based on the striations(this was a big time flying
saucer). All of us thought we were going to be in for some major
trouble/fun when this moved overhead. We were sure we would be in for
some hail and high winds and maybe even a tornado. The tornado thing
bothered me, because their basement is only half underground(the west
side walks outside to the pool). As it passed overhead the most we got
were some sprinkles and an awesome view of the belly of a mountain
sized(much larger actually) spinning updraft.

The thing I noticed the most as it passed overhead was how much the
bottom of it wanted to push down. The cloud motions weren't rotating all
that much underneath, but you could see areas pushing down from time to
time.

It put out this nasty CG with very thick branches. Other than the
lightning and nasty look we did not see much from this storm as it moved
over us. I imagine it was dropping some decent hail to the north a bit.

Supercell #3

The third supercell came just after dark. I never got any pictures
of it, but did get into some good sized hail. A friend and I took a drive
to see what we could see. Since the storms were progressivly coming in
further and further to the south we should have driven south. What we did
instead was drive west a little and end up under the hail shaft of the
it. As soon as the hail started hitting the truck we flew east in a big
hurry. The third tornado warning for Washington county was being issued
at this very moment. The sirens sounded in Blair three times this night.

My friend dropped me off at the house I was at and then he headed
home. Within about a minute or two of this, the hail had made it into our
area once again. The hail was just under baseball size. We stood at the
slidding door and watched as the hail pound the pool. Hail ripping into
water like it was was pretty cool to see.

This storm produced a tornado about 10 miles southwest of town. The
tornado damaged a church(with people in it) and some farm houses. I'm not
sure what it was ranked, but I would guess most likely an F1 or F2.